Mr. Curtis Goes to South Jersey

The requisite table of various and sundry gaming goodies!

So I've finally found the time to get pics off my new phone and write this post! On Sunday November 4th, I had the pleasure of meeting Michael Curtis, the man behind the Society of Torch, Pole and Rope blog and the creator of OSR staples such as Stonehell Dungeon and the Dungeon Alphabet. Despite the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, he drove many hours from New York to New Jersey, South Jersey to be exact (we Jerseyites consider North and South Jersey to be almost separate realms, but that's a discussion for another time).

When I arrived at the incredible All Things Fun in West Berlin, I had a chance to talk to Michael about gaming, the OSR, and the havoc of Sandy before a couple other gamers arrived: Rich of Circle of Dar Janix fame, and Mike from Swords of Legend. Once these fine fellows joined us, we got down to the business of gaming!

The calm before the proverbial gaming storm...

Michael gave us the following choice: he could run us through his Emirikol was Framed! DCC RPG module, or he could run us through one of two unpublished modules. My fellows and I leaped at the chance to playtest something for him! So Michael handed out some 1st-level DCC characters (we decided to take two each) and gave us a quick overview of the system before starting the session. 

I think he's trying to scare me with his GM screen (the "evil" dice bag is mine)...

I thought it was rather hilarious that one of my character's Lucky Rolls (part of the DCC RPG character creation process) was "Conceived on Horseback." I thought such a feat of agility on the part of the character's parents would confer some sort of bonus for the offspring, but alas that is not the case.

My two characters' sheets and associated spell page print-outs.

I don't want to give away anything about the module we playtested, but suffice to say it definitely had a strong old-school feel, with what I thought was a nod to at least one Basic D&D module from back in the day. I'll leave it at that.

I picked up a copy of the revised Dungeon Alphabet signed by the author himself, as well as some other swag that Michael brought along. Bottom line: it was cool to finally meet a prominent member of the old-school RPG community to talk about gaming and get down to some actual play!

This should have at least given me a Dex bonus, thanks to very agile parents...

'Nuff said.